What'd I Say
original song written, composed, and performed by Ray Charles
"What'd I Say" (or "What I Say") is an American rhythm and blues song by Ray Charles, released in June 1959. As a single divided into two parts, it was one of the first soul songs. The composition was improvised one evening late in 1958 when Charles, his orchestra, and backup singers had played their entire set list at a show and still had time left; the response from many audiences was so enthusiastic that Charles announced to his producer that he was going to record it.
After his run of R&B hits, this song finally broke Charles into mainstream pop music and itself sparked a new sub-genre of R&B titled soul, finally putting together all the elements that Charles had been creating since he recorded "I Got a Woman" in 1954. The gospel and rhumba influences combined with the sexual innuendo in the song made it not only widely popular but very controversial to both white and black audiences. It earned Ray Charles his first gold record and has been one of the most influential songs in R&B and rock and roll history. For the rest of his career, Charles closed every concert with the song. It was added to the National Recording Registry in 2002 and appeared in the 2003 and 2021 versions of Rolling Stone's "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time" list: at number 10 in 2003 and at number 80 in 2021.
Background
Ray Charles was 28 years old in 1958, with 10 years of experience recording primarily rhythm and blues music in a style similar to that of Nat King Cole and Charles Brown. He signed with Atlantic Records in 1952 where producers Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler encouraged him to broaden his repertoire.
The public source identifies “What'd I Say” as original song written, composed, and performed by Ray Charles. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around What'd, original and song.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1113979. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1959, 1958, 1954 and 2002.
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This entry incorporates text from “What'd I Say” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.